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Film

100 Greatest Jewish Films

Day 5, Nos. 5 to 1: Annie Hall is for lovers, Sunset Boulevard is brutally candid, and E.T. is the greatest Jewish film of all

By Tablet Magazine|December 9, 2011 7:00 AM|12comments
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(The Jazz Singer: Getty Images; E.T., A Night at the Opera, Sunset Boulevard, and Annie Hall: Corbis)
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100 Greatest Jewish Films

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By Tablet Magazine

We’re down to the top five. After spending four days counting down the 100 Greatest Jewish Films of all time, it’s time our final installment.

Click here to see today’s countdown, starting with No. 5.

From amorous intellectuals to displaced aliens, the tail end of our list aims to capture the complexities and richness of Jewish contributions to filmmaking. Here are our top five films.

Click here to start the final part of Tablet Magazine’s list of 100 greatest Jewish films.
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  • JCarpenter

    After yesterday, I had fear that the Marx Bros might not even make the list; with relief, I will spend the rest of my day humming “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” . . . .

  • http://eaazi.blogspot.com Joachim Martillo

    A very odd collection.

    I don’t know how Dr. Zhivago (Jewish Love Affair with the Soviet Union), The Heartbreak Kid 1972 (Jewish-Gentile relations in the USA), and Planet of the Apes 2001 (Oppression of Palestinians — written by two former Golan-Globus screenwriters) could have been left out. I would probably also have included Sallah Shabati, which happens to be a Globus production. The name סאלח שבתי is a pun on סליחה שבאתי (slihah shebati) — sorry (pardon me) that I came. It is a sarcastic assessment of the lack of enthusiasm with which ethnic Ashkenazim (Vusvusim) greeted Jewish Arabs, who came to the State of Israel.

  • r.z. chesnoff

    By far, a weird rather farfetched, far stretching over philosophized list. Feh!

  • arnon

    Again you are allowing the Nazi like poster Joachim Martillo to post here.

  • arnon

    The Jewish film list is silly.

    Many films listed are not Jewish at all and Shindler’s List is hardly the worst film made about the Holocaust.

    I also missed The Pawnbroker another good film about coming to terms with the Holocaust.

  • Devorah Cohen

    Oh please, is having Spielberg as director/producer the only qualification to get on this list??? AI? Raiders of the Lost Ark?? Where is “Focus?” or “Left Luggage?” The Debt, Sarah’s Key, Snow in August, I could come up with a more relevant for 2011 list than this without using a film directory…..

  • Rocky

    A silly list. Most of the films have nothing to do with anything Jewish. I didn’t notice a single Yiddish film from before WWII.

    What kind list of great Jewish films leaves out “Yiddl Mit Den Fiddl” and includes “White Christmas”?

  • Shalom Freedman

    I find this list of ‘Jewish movies’ an exercise in delusion and self- deception. Making movies ‘Jewish’ when they have no real connection with Jewish history and religion is , in my opinion, dishonest.
    The whole list is to my mind, a sham.

  • philip mann

    You guys must have had a good laugh putting in white Christmas.

    On a serious note , why not Blazing Saddles ? It even had Yiddish spoken in it !

  • michaelira

    Five days worth of utter drivel. This series would have been more appropriately published around April 1.

  • Les Miller

    Island of Lost Souls is a telling and chilling warning about what is waiting for Jews. “What is the Law?” “Are we not men?” Bela Lugosi’s Lawsayer is the first intimation of a Kapo; Dr. Moreau’s island is the first suggestion that Mengele exists and he does inspired work. And the Island, with its half human half animal population, victims of Moreau’s selection process, is our first glimpse of Auschwitz and the Final Solution.

    Other than the fact that like any Holocuast documentary this movie glimpses organized barbarity with unsparing images, this movie would have a broader audience today. It deserves an elevated position on your list.

  • Mike Spindell

    A silly exercise of the workings of minds desperately trying to appear intellectual and hip. The stretches of logic used to include some films were astonishingly puerile.

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100 Greatest Jewish Films

Day 5, Nos. 5 to 1: Annie Hall is for lovers, Sunset Boulevard is brutally candid, and E.T. is the greatest Jewish film of all

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